Average V Median wage Ireland?

Geuze · 02-07-2021 1:30pm

Benedict wrote: »

The "median" ft wage is what we need to know - and it's not available.

People guess that it's about 10/12k lower than the "average" ft wage - but we don't know.

Even the CSO has not published the median ft wage.

2018 median earnings = 592.60 per week, across all employments

Mean = 740.72
Median = 592.60

You are looking for median earnings for FT workers, yes you are correct, I don't see that published.

Geuze · 02-07-2021 1:31pm

ELM327 wrote: »

That's a model though not accurate. Most large companies report mean average earnings so even if CSO publish a "median" there's already some "mean" in there.

Huh? I don't get you?

ELM327 · 02-07-2021 1:31pm

That shows a median average of 30k, excluding some exclusions that need to be made for part time workers.
Probably pushing it to 40k - 10k less than the mean, like we all suspected anyway

ELM327 · 02-07-2021 1:32pm

Geuze wrote: »

Huh? I don't get you?

Simple really.
Company A has 1 CEO on €1 million and 99 employees on €10k.
Company reports average salary of (1*1mm+99*10k)/100 to CSO

Geuze · 02-07-2021 1:57pm

ELM327 wrote: »

Simple really.
Company A has 1 CEO on €1 million and 99 employees on €10k.
Company reports average salary of (1*1mm+99*10k)/100 to CSO

CSO Background Notes to Structural Earnings data:

This release presents statistics on earnings based on administrative data sources. The primary data source is the Revenue Commissioner’s P35L dataset of employee annual earnings which is linked to CSO and other data to provide demographic breakdowns of earnings similar to those previously provided by the National Employment Survey (NES). This release does not replicate all the tables available from the former NES; it does not contain any breakdown of hours worked or hourly earnings.

Methodology

The results presented in this release are based on a data-matching exercise of three administrative data sources:

The P35L files (employer end-of-year returns) of the Revenue Commissioners.
The Central Records System of the Department of Social Protection.
The Central Statistics Office’s Business Register.
The linkage and analysis was undertaken by the CSO for statistical purposes in line with the Statistics Act, 1993 and the CSO Data Protocol available at: www.cso.ie/en/aboutus/csodataprotocol.

Before using personal administrative data for statistical purposes, the CSO removes all identifying personal information including the PPSN. The Personal Public Service Number (PPSN) is a unique number that enables individuals to access social welfare benefits, personal taxation and other public services in Ireland. The CSO converts the PPSN to a Protected Identifier Key (PIK). The PIK is a unique and non-identifiable number which is internal to the CSO. Using the PIK enables the CSO to link and analyse data for statistical purposes, while protecting the security and confidentiality of the individual data. The P35L, CRS and CSO records were linked using the PIK for this project. All records in the datasets are anonymised and the results are in the form of statistical aggregates which do not identify any individuals.

The publication tables in this release are provided by NACE economic sector, gender, age, nationality and region (residence) and are available on the CSO Statbank (CSO Main Data Dissemination Service). Average weekly earnings are provided and the information covers both the public and private sectors. Additional earnings analysis tables using the administrative data sources detailed above will be added to the CSO Statbank in the coming weeks.

The Revenue Commissioners also publish data based on the P35L file under 'Schedule E' on the CSO Statbank. This includes mainly PAYE individuals but also includes non-PAYE income and records for married couples. The CSO analysis is for PAYE individuals only.

Geuze · 02-07-2021 1:57pm

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2018/backgroundnotes/

The CSO background notes don't suggest that each firm submits a mean figure?

Benedict · 03-07-2021 9:04am

Geuze wrote: »

2018 median earnings = 592.60 per week, across all employments

Mean = 740.72
Median = 592.60

You are looking for median earnings for FT workers, yes you are correct, I don't see that published.

When Leo (in '20) referred to the "average person" earning 47k per year (now raised to nearly 50k) he was specifically referring to ft workers. Most people understand "average person" to refer to "most people" or "median". But where did he get that figure of 47k? If it's available to Leo, why not us?
And by the way, there's no way the median ft wage in 20 was 47k. If it was even 40k I'd eat my hat!

Yyhhuuu · 03-07-2021 9:23am

Benedict wrote: »

When Leo (in '20) referred to the "average person" earning 47k per year (now raised to nearly 50k) he was specifically referring to ft workers. Most people understand "average person" to refer to "most people" or "median". But where did he get that figure of 47k? If it's available to Leo, why not us?
And by the way, there's no way the median ft wage in 20 was 47k. If it was even 40k I'd eat my hat!

Are these incomes before tax?

Geuze · 03-07-2021 4:32pm

Yyhhuuu wrote: »

Are these incomes before tax?

All wages/earnings/income published by CSO are always gross.

Well, nearly all of the time.

They do also publish disposable income.

Geuze · 03-07-2021 4:34pm

Benedict wrote: »

When Leo (in '20) referred to the "average person" earning 47k per year (now raised to nearly 50k) he was specifically referring to ft workers. Most people understand "average person" to refer to "most people" or "median". But where did he get that figure of 47k? If it's available to Leo, why not us?
And by the way, there's no way the median ft wage in 20 was 47k. If it was even 40k I'd eat my hat!

LV was quoting the mean earnings for FT workers, available here:

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/elca/earningsandlabourcostsannualdata2019/

See table 5.

2019 = 48,946 for FT workers.

As we have discussed, median earnings for FT workers are not published by the CSO.

Eurostat might have them.

Benedict · 04-07-2021 5:34pm

Geuze wrote: »

LV was quoting the mean earnings for FT workers, available here:

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/elca/earningsandlabourcostsannualdata2019/

See table 5.

2019 = 48,946 for FT workers.

As we have discussed, median earnings for FT workers are not published by the CSO.

Eurostat might have them.

Politicians like to pretend everybody is doing really well - even if they're not. If the median was higher than the mean/average, then it's the median we'd all be hearing about.

If Leo can give the average, then he can give the median. To calculate the average, he must know the total earned by ft worker and also the number of ft workers so he must know what the median is.

Geuze · 04-07-2021 6:47pm

He is just quoting CSO stats.

If the CSO published the median earnings of FT workers, we would all be using it, including LV.

Peregrinus · 05-07-2021 6:10am

Benedict wrote: »

If Leo can give the average, then he can give the median. To calculate the average, he must know the total earned by ft worker and also the number of ft workers so he must know what the median is.

No. We've been though this already, Benedict. Given the total earned by full-time workers and the number of full-time workers you can calculate the average (mean) earnings of full-time workers, but you cannot calculate the median earnings of full-time workers. You need much, much more data to calculate the median.

Opinion-massaging aside, probably the main reason why the mean is quoted much more widely than the median is that it's much easier to calculate, and can be stated with much greater confidence.

Jim2007 · 05-07-2021 6:41am

Benedict wrote: »

Politicians like to pretend everybody is doing really well - even if they're not. If the median was higher than the mean/average, then it's the median we'd all be hearing about.

Well if you could figure out how it could be calculated based on available data, it would help your case…. But crediting politicians with the ability to do so and then not use it, is giving them way to much credit.

If you do a bit of googling you’ll find surveys suggesting that the average is about 49k and the median is about 62k. In any case it is meaningless as it fails account for expenditure, available public services etc.

You need to find another measure to convince yourself that people are not doing so well.

Benedict · 05-07-2021 10:22am

Peregrinus wrote: »

No. We've been though this already, Benedict. Given the total earned by full-time workers and the number of full-time workers you can calculate the average (mean) earnings of full-time workers, but you cannot calculate the median earnings of full-time workers. You need much, much more data to calculate the median.

Opinion-massaging aside, probably the main reason why the mean is quoted much more widely than the median is that it's much easier to calculate, and can be stated with much greater confidence.

We may well have been "through this already" but not with a satisfactory result.

Of course you can't determine the median wages from a total amount earned by all ft workers. You need to know how many earned x and y etc. But this information has to be (and is) available to the authorities. Therefore the median can be calculated. Are you suggesting that nobody in authority can determine who earns what? The Revenue must have access to these figures - so are you suggesting that they won't disclose it to the CSO?

Peregrinus · 05-07-2021 11:38am

Again, we've been through this before, Bendict. Revenue figures don't distinguish between full-time and part-time workers.

No doubt the median can be calculated - or, at least, estimated. It's a lot of work, requiring a lot of data, and probably doesn't have th precision that the mean earnings figure has. Someone may well have estimated it - if not the CSO then some academic economist who needs it for a model or for international comparisons. But it's not a figure that the CSO officially publishes or keeps up to date, presumably because it's not required for public policy purposes - or, at least, the utility it would have for public policy purposes doesn't justify the trouble and expense of compiling it and keeping it up to date.

Benedict · 05-07-2021 5:12pm

Most people would agree that the median ft income figure is very important - arguably more important than the average because it's the median which gives the true level of income for most people. And yet nobody knows what it is!
The following is a quote from the CSO:

"Nearly two thirds (62.6%) of Irish households had a gross income of less than €60,000 in 2016. In contrast, only 14.1% had an income above €100,000,"

They know what Dad and Mum earn between them - but they've no idea what Dad earns or Mam earns. Just what Dad and Mam earn!

How did they know that 14.1% (not 14.2%) of households earned over 100k? These earners don't all work in the same company? The salaries had to be calculated by reference to each income.

There's enough data out there to make Einstein's head spin - but they can't say what the median ft wage is? Even approximately?

Podge_irl · 05-07-2021 5:29pm

Benedict wrote: »

Most people would agree that the median ft income figure is very important - arguably more important than the average because it's the median which gives the true level of income for most people. And yet nobody knows what it is!
The following is a quote from the CSO:

"Nearly two thirds (62.6%) of Irish households had a gross income of less than €60,000 in 2016. In contrast, only 14.1% had an income above €100,000,"

They know what Dad and Mum earn between them - but they've no idea what Dad earns or Mam earns. Just what Dad and Mam earn!

How did they know that 14.1% (not 14.2%) of households earned over 100k? These earners don't all work in the same company? The salaries had to be calculated by reference to each income.

There's enough data out there to make Einstein's head spin - but they can't say what the median ft wage is? Even approximately?

Tax returns are essentially done by household. Its not that complicated.

They also don't/can't distinguish between full and part time workers.

3DataModem · 05-07-2021 5:32pm

fvp4 wrote: »

There was the time bill gates goes into a pub...

Or the fella whose job moved from England to Ireland and the average wage improved in both countries increased. /jk

Jim2007 · 06-07-2021 12:06am

Benedict wrote: »

The Revenue must have access to these figures - so are you suggesting that they won't disclose it to the CSO?

They can’t disclose, there is a thing called GDPR. It protects people’s privacy so no you are never getting access to people tax information.

Geuze · 06-07-2021 1:46am

Benedict,

you may be interested to know that Eurostat publish median annual earnings data for FT workers.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/labour-market/earnings/database

In 2018, the figure is 40,074.
EARN_SES_ANNUAL

There you go, there is the figure you wanted.

Geuze · 06-07-2021 1:47am

Jim2007 wrote: »

They can’t disclose, there is a thing called GDPR. It protects people’s privacy so no you are never getting access to people tax information.

Revenue provide earnings data to the CSO.

See here:

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2018/

The Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) publication presents earnings statistics compiled based on administrative data sources for the period 2011 to 2018. The primary data source is the Revenue Commissioner’s P35L dataset of employee annual earnings. This is linked to CSO's Business Register and other data to provide economic and demographic breakdowns of employee earnings in Ireland. Please refer to the background notes of this publication for further information on the data sources utilised and how they were matched.

Geuze · 06-07-2021 1:53am

We can now compare the 2018 mean annual earnings from the CSO with the median annual earnings from Eurostat.

All for FT workers.

2018 CSO mean = 47,596

2018 Eurostat mean = 49,790
2018 Eurostat median = 40,074

Eurostat covers these sectors:
[B-S_X_O] Industry, construction and services (except public administration, defense, compulsory social security)

Benedict · 06-07-2021 1:10pm

Geuze's link https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpub...tasources2018/ finally shows the median wage for ft workers in Ireland. The figure is for 2018 but it shows that the median is available. See copied & pasted below from CSO.

"Total median annual earnings were €36,095 in 2018"

The background notes show that it refers to ft workers.

This is what the "average person" earned and it sure as hell hadn't jumped to 47k by '20 - or 49k in '21.

(ie the "average person" with a ft job - which many people don't have. The median income would be much lower if it included unemployed, retired and part-time etc.)

Geuze · 06-07-2021 4:17pm

Benedict,

the CSO Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources 2018 does not refer to FT workers, where are you seeing that?

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2018/

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2018/backgroundnotes/

Look at the section on Annual Earnings, I see no mention of FT/PT?

I see everything else: age/sex/county/sector, etc., but not full-time/part-time.

Benedict · 06-07-2021 4:41pm

Geuze wrote: »

Benedict,

the CSO Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources 2018 does not refer to FT workers, where are you seeing that?

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2018/

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eaads/earningsanalysisusingadministrativedatasources2018/backgroundnotes/

Look at the section on Annual Earnings, I see no mention of FT/PT?

I see everything else: age/sex/county/sector, etc., but not full-time/part-time.

I noticed under exclusions it said "employments where the duration was less than two weeks in the year." I took this to mean full time but yes, I see what you mean, one could work 50 weeks part time?

If it does include part time, then if X works 1 hour per week for 50 weeks in the year, his few quid would be factored into the "median" figure?

This means that median figure quoted by CSO actually means nothing - so we are back to where we started.

Geuze · 07-07-2021 1:07am

Benedict,

notice in the CSO Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources 2018 that they refer to employments.

Many people have more than one employment, bear that in mind.

I used to have two employments for several years.

My retired father has a pension, but in some years he also has two employments.

Life is not simple.

Regarding your previous post, see this:

Exclusion of employees from earnings data:

For the purposes of this analysis the CSO excluded employees earning less than €500 per annum and employments where the duration was less than two weeks in the year. Also excluded were secondary employments earning less than €4,000 per annum, extremely high earnings values and missing employer and employee reference numbers. Employment activity in NACE sectors A, T and U has also been excluded from the analysis.

Geuze · 07-07-2021 1:12am

Benedict wrote: »

I noticed under exclusions it said "employments where the duration was less than two weeks in the year." I took this to mean full time but yes, I see what you mean, one could work 50 weeks part time?

If it does include part time, then if X works 1 hour per week for 50 weeks in the year, his few quid would be factored into the "median" figure?

This means that median figure quoted by CSO actually means nothing - so we are back to where we started.

If somebody has low annual earnings, it doesn't affect the median.

That is the main advantage of the median over the mean.

The median is not affected by outliers.

If you are asking, is somebody who earns 100 per week / 5,000 per year, included in these stats, then the answer is yes.

They are included, and so they pull down the mean annual earnings.

They do not have any direct effect on the median.

But they are included in all the data used to calculate the median, because the median here is across ALL workers.

Peregrinus · 07-07-2021 2:08am

Benedict wrote: »

I noticed under exclusions it said "employments where the duration was less than two weeks in the year." I took this to mean full time but yes, I see what you mean, one could work 50 weeks part time?

If it does include part time, then if X works 1 hour per week for 50 weeks in the year, his few quid would be factored into the "median" figure?

This means that median figure quoted by CSO actually means nothing - so we are back to where we started.

It doesn't mean nothing. It's not the answer to the question you're asking, but that doesn't make it meaningless.

Benedict · 18-07-2021 1:55pm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117611020#Comment_117611020

Benedict · 18-07-2021 2:02pm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117600058#Comment_117600058

It may well be the case that Revenue cannot disclose salary details of individuals due to GDPR restrictions. But that would not prevent them from handing over anonymous statistics. If GDPR prevented them from handing over any information on earnings - even anonymous information - to the CSO, then the CSO would know practically nothing.

crossman47 · 21-07-2021 11:47am

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117603277#Comment_117603277

Are you ever going to give up? How could an earnings series include retired and unemployed? By the way, Eurostat do not carry out surveys. Their figures come from a survey carried out by CSO.

Benedict · 21-07-2021 4:28pm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117640918#Comment_117640918

With respect, it's not clear to me how your contribution relates to anything I've said? I'm not talking about pensions or Eurostat?

Two things are required to calculate a median ft wage. (1) The number of people in ft employment, (2) How much each of them is earning (just a statistic, no ID needed). For the "average" to be known, (1) must be known. Revenue must know the answer to (2) and giving figures to CSO without ID does not breach any privacy rules.

So what's the problem?

Peregrinus · 22-07-2021 2:31am

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117642663#Comment_117642663

From a calculation point of view, the problem is that Revenue knows how much each person is earning, but it doesn't know whether each person is a full-time worker or not. To calculate the median earnings for full-time workers you'd have to (1) take the Revenue dataset for all earners; (2) drop the data points relating to earners who are not full-time workers; and (3) calculate the median from the remaining dataset, which would represent full-time workers only. Neither Revenue nor CSO have the information they would need to complete step (2); simply knowing the total number of full-time workers is not enough to do this.

In reality, that's not in fact how median earnings are calculated in the real world. Where it's done, I think it's mostly done by stratified sampling of household surveys - as in, you interview a number (i.e. several thousand) of households in detail, asking them questions about all the things you're interested in, including in this context (a) whether the adult members of the household work full-time; and (b ) how much they earn. If you're being thorough, you check this by looking at their payslips, etc, rather than relying on their own estimation of whether they work full-time and how much they earn. You then statistically weight the results to reflect the demographics of the entire country. And from that you can calculate a median.

It's not perfect, but it's close enough to give you a meaningful and useful figure. But it's a lot of work and, therefore, expense.

The CSO does household surveys three or four times a year. Each survey would cover, say, 13,000 or 14,000 housholds - maybe 40,000 people? There'll be a standard set of question that are asked every time - age, sex, education levels, that kind of thing. This enables them to know how much the sample of households they are studying matches or differs from the demographics of the community at large, which means they can weight the responses to extrapolate what they learn from the survey to the whole country.

They they'll ask the questions that they are actually studying. This will differ each time. It's usually co-ordinated with the questions being asked in similar household surveys by other national statistical agencies in the EU, so that EU as well as national data can be obtained, and so that Irish data can be meaningfully compared with similar data from other EU countries. Each time there's a particular focus - it might be on eliciting household data about health and healthcare, of financial consumption, or lifestyle, or . . . well, anything.

It seems to me that what you need is to persuade the CSO (and other EU statistical agencies) that there should be a focus on employment and earnings, so that they will ask questions from which median full-time earnings could be calculated. But you'll need to persuade them that there's a public policy need for this - that the data will be useful for government planning, policymaking and policy delivery.

Benedict · 23-07-2021 12:07pm

According to CSO, the total number of ft workers in 2020 was 1,818,300. (Quote from CSO: "There were 1,818,300 persons in full-time employment in 2020 while the corresponding number for part-time employment was 404,200. Full-time employment accounted for just over 80% (81.8%) of total employment in 2020."). For the CSO to be able to claim that there are 1,818,300 ft workers, and that the total earnings of that ft cohort is X. Then they must know - at least approximately, what each of the ft workers earns.

If there are 10 ft workers living on Anywhere Road then in order to say definitively what the total ft earnings is, I must know what each is earning (or have access to that figure calculated by another reliable source.)

The total amount earned by the 1,818,300 persons in full-time is known. Revenue must know - at least approx - how that breaks down. The notion that a business employing 1000 workers just state the total gross earnings the business and tells Rev. to mind its own business as to who's earning what, cannot be the case. Rev must have knowledge of individuals and clearly, if CSO can say how many in the country are ft, then that figure is known and with skilled staff and powerful computers available to government, the median ft should be available.

Any total number must calculated on individual numbers. You cannot say the total earnings of the ft workers in Anywhere Road is 100k if you don't know what each is earning. Otherwise, how could you be confident that your total is correct.

crossman47 · 23-07-2021 2:21pm

Per Benedict: Any total number must calculated on individual numbers. You cannot say the total earnings of the ft workers in Anywhere Road is 100k if you don't know what each is earning. Otherwise, how could you be confident that your total is correct.

I don't know about the current situation but, in the past, CSO surveys asked employers to report aggregate total earnings, not individual earnings so above point was wrong then.

Benedict · 23-07-2021 6:29pm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117651972#Comment_117651972

I don't know what info CSO request but what I do know is that if Company X has 1000 properly documented employees, then Revenue know what each is earning. Revenue deal with each individual. We know from CSO themselves that the number of ft workers is available, we know from Leo that the total amount earned by ft workers is available to him and we know that Revenue MUST know what each properly documented ft employee is earning.

So, I hope you will now agree that the median ft wage can be calculated.

So what's the problem?

Benedict · 24-07-2021 6:21pm

Just to recap:

(1) Total number of ft workers is known by CSO to be 1,818,300

(2) Total gross Euro earned by ft workers is known.

(3) Total amount earned by ft workers can only be known through totting up what individual ft workers earn. So it is also known.

Therefore, calculating the median ft wage should be a matter of pressing a few keys on a keyboard.

So, next election? If any politician is proudly using the average wage to suggest what the "average person" is earning, he/should add that most people don't earn anything like 49k per annum.

Peregrinus · 26-07-2021 2:19am

Not doubting you, but can you explain how (2) the total gross euro earned by ft workers is known? (As in, what makes you so sure that it is known? Who publishes this figure? Where?)

Benedict · 26-07-2021 9:26am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117661379#Comment_117661379

In order to calculate the "average" gross ft wages, the total gross ft wages must be known.

For Leo (or his team) to calculate that the "average" in 2020 was 47k, the total and the number of ft workers must have been known.

Also remember that the CSO have published total number of ft workers - so they must know who these workers are and they will also know what they earn. So finding the total gross amount earned by ft workers is just a totting up excercise - as is calculating the median.

The total earned by ft workers can only be calculated by totting-up the wages of each ft worker. How else could they know the total? By reading the tea-leaves?

Peregrinus · 26-07-2021 12:07pm

You don't need to know total gross FT wages if you're finding average gross FT wage by stratified sampling, as described above.

Similarly, CSO may know the total number of FT workers without knowing who those workers are (and, therefore, without knowing what they earn). For example, the number of FT workers may be derived from surveying employers.

Benedict · 26-07-2021 1:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117662650#Comment_117662650

The fact is that CSO already know the number of ft employees. They publish the exact figure. They don't get that figure by phoning employers and saying "How many have you got working on the farm?" or dropping into a supermarket in Kerry and counting the staff. They know it because there is paperwork linked to each of the ft employees. The paperwork will also show how much they earn.

That's all you need for both an average and a median ft wage.

crossman47 · 26-07-2021 5:32pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117663181#Comment_117663181

They don't get their employment figure the way you suggest. As has been posted above, they get it from the regular quarterly national household survey, a survey of a sample of households.

Peregrinus · 27-07-2021 2:27am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117663181#Comment_117663181

What is this "paperwork linked to each of the FT employees" that the CSO have, or have access do? It can't be Revenue records because, even if the CSO had free run of the Revenue system - which they don't - Revenue records don't distinguish between FT workers and other workers. So it must be something else. What is it?

Benedict · 27-07-2021 9:48am

Look, let's get down to basics and work out way upwards.

The CSO know exactly how many ft workers there are. So clearly, there must be documentary evidence of these individuals. So it is known, for example, that Sean Smith is a ft worker. It can only be known that Sean is a ft worker because there is documentation on Sean. And because Sean is documented as a worker, his income must be known by Revenue. So the documented link between Sean and his income exists.

And the same can be said for every documented ft worker.

How do you suppose that the exact number of ft workers is known without knowing who they are?

crossman47 · 27-07-2021 11:42am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117666969#Comment_117666969

Because the total is estimated from a household sample survey - not a fully documented list of all of them.

rob316 · 27-07-2021 11:47am

Most people I know would be on about 40k, give or take. Friend in IT would be on well north of 100k, another friend is self employed and told me he took 300k from his company in 2019. It's easy to skew the average figure.

Benedict · 27-07-2021 12:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117667648#Comment_117667648

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117667623#Comment_117667623

The number of ft workers is known.

What each of them earns is known.

Therefore, the median ft wage should be available.

Sarn · 27-07-2021 12:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117667784#Comment_117667784

Is it known what each FT worker earns? Does Revenue know if someone is PT or FT? If not, then all you could get is a median for all workers.

Benedict · 27-07-2021 1:44pm

The CSO know how many ft workers there are so they must know who they are - or be given the figure by someone who does. So the identity of the ft workers is known and also how much they earn is known by Rev.

It may be that the CSO know who the ft workers are but not how much they earn and the Rev know how much they earn but not if they're ft.

But if the CSO do not get the number of ft workers from Rev. then where do they get it? The didn't pluck the exact figure of 1,818,300 out of the air?

Average V Median wage Ireland?

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